


Perseid Dreaming

by vinnie2757



Series: Tales from Barton Farm [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Barton Farm, Domestic Fluff, Family, Gen, he lives in the farm verse, pietro didnt die i will fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 14:22:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4567785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Perseids come on the 12th August, and Cooper wants to see them.</p><p>[The Bartons go star-gazing.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perseid Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> A little fic for the farm 'verse and for my darling girl

Coop comes hammering down the stairs early in the morning. Clint, sprawled out on the couch with Nathaniel on his chest, dozing after a night spent mostly awake trying to calm the boy down from a bad dream, makes pathetic whining noises and flaps an arm in his eldest son’s direction.

‘Quietly,’ he whines, and Coop almost falls over, skidding to a stop on too-soft socks.

‘Sorry,’ he whispers.

Nathaniel continues to doze.

Clint cranes his neck and squints up at his boy, eyes bright.

‘What are you so excited about?’ he asks. ‘Here, take him for a second, would you?’

Coop creeps over and eases Nathaniel into his arms so his dad can sit up, after which Clint takes him back, settled over his shoulder in the crease of his arm.

‘It’s the Perseids tonight,’ Coop says, ‘the charts say we’ve got a good chance of seeing them!’

Clint has the blank look of someone who has no idea what was just said, but appreciates the enthusiasm it was said with. ‘Right. The Perseids are?’

‘Meteors, Dad,’ Coop says, and bless his heart, he’s so like his mother, pleasant to his core and not exasperated. Clint has the feeling they might have talked about the Perseids before. What was he doing last August? He doesn’t remember. Something ridiculous, no doubt. ‘They go through Perseus, it’s a Greek mythology thing.’

‘ _Oh_ ,’ he replies, ‘Oh, I know the ones! I saw them a few years ago, on a mission with your Aunty Nat. Very pretty to look at.’

‘Can we look at them?’

Clint snorts and ruffles his son’s hair, begins herding him towards the kitchen.

‘Of course we can,’ he says, ‘ask your momma and your siblings at breakfast, and we’ll all go out tonight, yeah? Go out and watch the meteors.’

Laura comes into the kitchen, shaking her hair out and yawning a few minutes later. Nathaniel is being entertained by his brother while Clint works on getting breakfast ready. She makes a pit-stop at her sons, kissing both of their heads and mumbling a ‘good morning’ to them both before heading to the kitchen proper, wrapping her arms around Clint’s middle and kissing the back of his neck.

‘Morning, honey,’ she hums, and he pats her hands.

‘Morning. I put the kettle on.’

She leans around him to find the kettle on the hob, already steaming.

‘I love you,’ she says, kisses his arm, and perks up enough to start helping to make breakfast.

Over the next five minutes or so, Lila and Pietro manage to stumble into the kitchen, looking messy-haired and drool-faced.

‘Glad to see you could make it,’ Clint laughs, and both of them stick their tongues out, flopping into their seats at the table and resting their heads on their arms, as if getting up before eight in the morning is such a crime.

‘I don’t know why you’re so tired,’ Laura says, as though she hadn’t come stumbling in just as zombie-like as they did.

‘We were up all night,’ Pietro grunts into his arms.

‘Doing what?’ Coop asks, because he’s the only one allowed to be up for even half the night, and he still manages to get up early.

‘Reading,’ Lila says. Brags, really. ‘Weren’t we, Piet?’

‘We were,’ he agrees, and his thumb appears from under an arm. ‘Read ten chapters.’

‘It was twelve.’

He refuses to answer, and buries his face further into the crease of his elbow.

‘Sit up,’ Clint says, and when the two have done so, he puts their breakfast plates down for them.

Breakfast is quiet, content, everyone still in the process of waking up – even Clint and Cooper, who had been the brightest eyed of them ten minutes ago – and for several minutes, the only sound is the clinking of cutlery and the babbles of Nathaniel, who is happy enough playing with his activity book.

‘There’s gonna be meteors tonight,’ Cooper blurts out, breaking the silence.

Pietro almost chokes on a mouthful of blueberries, because Coop hadn’t exactly been quiet about the announcement, and had practically shouted in his ear.

‘Coop,’ Laura chides, but it’s gentle, amused.

Pietro shoots her a scathing look, but she just smiles at him, and he swallows thickly.

‘What about the meteors?’ Lila asks around a mouthful of oats, and Clint clears his throat. She swallows thickly, and asks again.

‘It’s the Perseids,’ Coop explains, ‘the ones that go through Perseus. It’s a once-a-year event! We’ve – well, Dad’s never been home before, and we got Piet here now, and Nath, and I thought – maybe we could look at them tonight? All of us, I mean.’

Laura glances over at her husband, drags her foot up his calf, and he pretends like he doesn’t notice, but he’s smiling that smile of his again, proud and flattered and a little bit flustered.

‘I think that’s a great idea,’ Clint says, and Pietro nods.

‘I have never seen meteors,’ he says.

Coop straightens in his seat. Clint and Laura share a look; Pietro doesn’t know what he’s let himself in for, but he’ll find out soon enough. Coop loves nothing more than getting to share his knowledge.

As Coop helps wash up from breakfast, he says, ‘I wonder how many we’ll see.’

‘What do the big guys say?’ Clint asks, and Coop glances over his shoulder to where his dad is sat backwards on his chair, chin on folded arms.

‘Big guys?’

‘The big name astronomers, like Foster and that lot. The ones who write the books.’

Coop’s ears burn at the mention of Foster, and maybe one day Clint will tell him about New Mexico and Jane Foster and how he, superhero father and the muscle on base that night, slept through most of it.

‘They said it’s, um. It’s a hundred an hour, I think. It’s a lot.’

‘Just over one and a half a minute, that _is_ a lot,’ Clint agrees.

Laura finishes rinsing off the last plate and empties the sink. As she wipes her hands off on the towel, she asks, ‘do you think it’ll be too hot for cocoa tonight?’

Four voices immediately chime back with a resounding, ‘no!’ and she laughs, holds her hands up.

‘Alright, alright, no need to yell. I think I get the message!’

Once everything’s put away, the kids scurry off to get dressed. Laura lingers downstairs a while longer, draping herself over her husband so that they can both play with their son. When he starts fussing for food, she presses a kiss to Clint’s available jaw, and scoops their son up, heading to the nursery to take care of him. Clint doesn’t see any of them for a few hours until Lila comes to yell at him that lunch is ready, stop trying to shoot cans off the fence, Dad, jeez!

‘I was not _trying_ ,’ he protests, but climbs (jumps, much to his daughter’s delight) down from the shed roof, and scoops her up to take her inside. ‘I was succeeding, and you can go look after lunch if you don’t believe me.’

Lila tells him that she will, don’t worry, and he kisses her hair before setting her down on her feet.

The rest of the day passes much the same. Lila finds her way up onto the shed roof with a pair of binoculars to look at where Clint’s arrows are going, and Coop and Pietro go for a run with Lucky. Laura takes Nathaniel for a stroll around the fields and down to the pond to look at the frogs and whatever else has started growing in there – which just reminds Clint that he needs to clear it out so the kids have got somewhere to paddle in the hot days – and by dinner, they’ve had something resembling a productive day.

It’s been a good day, too, easy-going and peaceful, the kind of days Clint’s grown to appreciate over the last half-decade, because since the Avengers started, you know, existing, life’s gotten a lot tougher to manage. He thinks Laura likes these days too, and the kids, because he’s home, and there’s no one visiting and everything just sort of, floats. It’s nice. Real nice.

The afternoon trickles into evening, sunset pink and blue and beautiful, and as the stars begin to twinkle into life on the darkening sky, Coop asks if they can head out yet.

‘They say it’s going to be late when the big meteor shower is visible, but we might see a few more earlier,’ he explains.

With little more than a glance at each other, Clint and Laura both agree, and while Laura heads off to make cocoa, Clint heads to the utility room to get the garden blankets, taking Coop with him to find the best spot to watch the shower. They set the blankets down, and weigh them with stones so they don’t disappear, and return to the house to collect the rest of the family.

After making sure Nathaniel was comfortable in his Moses basket, cocoa in hand, they head off to the blankets and settle down to watch the stars.

Cooper talks to them for brief intervals at a time, tells them about the constellations, and how stars are formed, about how you can see Venus on a clear night. He points out Perseus too, draws the shape of the constellation in the sky, and Clint can almost see the hero himself. The Bartons have heard it before, and listening to the new facts Cooper’s learnt in the time between talks is always interesting, but Pietro has never heard it before, and hadn’t really had any interest in the stars before coming to the farm, so he’s enraptured, hanging on Coop’s every word.

Clint and Laura exchange glances every now and then, share a smile before returning to star-gazing.

As the evening wears into night proper, Nathaniel drifts off, followed closely by his sister. Pietro is the next to go, drawn to sleep by Lila’s warm weight against his side, using his arm as a pillow and teddy bear at the same time, and soon, Laura, her head on Clint’s belly and her fingers laced with his, falls asleep too.

With just Clint and Cooper left, the star-gazing is silent but for their collective breathing, the soft huffs of breath from flat backs and crooked necks. Clint moves his free arm, draws Cooper in to wrap his arm around him. Coop settles against his dad, can feel his heart beating where his head rests, and counts the minutes.

‘I like this,’ he whispers, quiet.

‘Yeah?’

Coop hums, wriggles as close as he can. Clint squeezes, soft, and Coop sighs.

‘Miss you when you’re gone. I wish Wanda could be here.’

Wanda is at HQ, testing the waters for being an Avenger. Clint’ll call her in the morning, make sure Steve and Nat haven’t driven her mad or to the hospital wing.

‘She’d like the meteors too,’ he hums, ‘maybe she’ll be watching them too.’

(She is, because Vision had asked her to accompany him. It was the first meteor shower of his existence, and he would like no company better than hers.)

‘I hope so.’

They fall silent again. Lila fidgets, and Pietro draws her close, curling up around her to stop her. Clint glances up above his head to watch him wrap his arm over her, tuck her toes in between his knees. It’s adorable.

‘There!’ Coop gasps, and Clint’s gaze darts to where Coop’s finger is pointing in time to see the last fraction of a second of the meteor’s tail disappearing.

‘Meteor?’ he asks, for confirmation.

‘Mm-hm.’

He considers waking the others, but Lila will get cranky, and it involves moving.

They lie there watching the shower for as long as Cooper can keep his eyes open, and Clint adores the little gasps and jerky points of fingers. Coop’s seen meteor showers before, seen a hundred shooting stars, but it doesn’t get old. Clint wonders if Jane is watching the shower, if she gets as excited about it as this bundle of astronomic energy in his arm, even though she’s got other worlds to explore and discover pathways to. The simple things in life are the best, Clint decides.

When Coop’s reactions begin to come further and further apart, Clint pinches at his side.

‘Coop,’ he whispers, ‘take Nathaniel inside for me, yeah? I think it’s time we headed back in.’

He’s sleepy enough to not protest; it’s hours past his usual star-gazing bedtime, and he obligingly gets to his feet to shuffle around his parents to take up the still-sleeping Nathaniel’s Moses basket and begin the trek back inside. Clint then reaches up to pinch at Pietro’s side, and bites back a laugh when he jerks awake.

He slurs in Sokovian, and Clint tells him to take his sister inside.

‘Just put her straight into bed, she’ll be alright.’

Pietro nods, and Clint waits until he’s safely upright with Lila cradled against his chest before he begins to move.

‘Up we go,’ he coos to his dozing wife, managing to get her up into his arms without waking her.

She stirs, briefly, as he gets to his feet, enough to help him by looping an arm over his shoulders and pressing a kiss to his neck.

‘Sorry I slept,’ she breathes, and he kisses her temple.

‘Sleep more,’ he replies, and chuckles when he gets back inside to find Cooper asleep face-first on the couch, Nathaniel safe at his side, blinking blearily up at Dad as he passes.

He knows Laura won’t mind him prioritising the kids, so he sets her down on the other couch, draping the throw over her to keep her warm, and crosses back to the kids. It doesn’t take long to get them upstairs and settled in bed, and he stops by Lila’s room to make sure she’s still asleep before returning downstairs. Laura is rubbing at her eyes, bleary and tired, and she tries to insist on helping him bring the blankets in, but he shoos her upstairs with kisses and gentle shoves to the backside. She goes with a quiet laugh, and he watches her brace herself on the treads with a fond grin.

He makes sure everything is in, and the doors are shut before looking through the window at the last meteorite he’ll see that night.

Maybe he wishes on that shooting star, maybe he doesn’t, it’s his business. But as he crawls into bed, laughing under his breath when Laura immediately turns toward him, gravitating towards his warmth, he finds himself wishing that this life, this happiness, will last for the rest of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> \- In terms of timeline, this is just after the last scene in AoU, and a couple of weeks before Bucky arrives.  
> \- It went a little more Clint-centric than I meant it to, but alas.  
> \- This shower is actually the first I've ever seen, and Loor was very excited about the probability that Coop was very excited about it, thus I wrote it.  
> \- I hope you enjoyed, my lovelies~!


End file.
